The Myth of "clean" Nuclear Power

[Oscar]

The Myth of "clean" Nuclear Power

October 21, 2006

The mining and processing of uranium ore to produce energy is an extremely technical and complex process. The investor proponents for nuclear energy claim that it is "clean". But, if one studies the entire process from mining to the eventual decommissioning of a nuclear power plant , it is anything but that.

It takes 98,000 tonnes of rock to be mined and processed to produce one tonne of uranium 235. A standard 100mw/eh nuclear reactor requires approximately 160 tonnes of uranium fuel, processed from 160 million tonnes of rock each year of its operation. In the lifetime of an average reactor, it could probably use up more energy than it would produce, in short, a negative return. And that is only the beginning of the total cost and the pollution that it will generate.

Making this uranium usable for nuclear power plants requires an intricate process to obtain uranium 238. This method of conversion and enrichment uses chemicals that produce greenhouse gases that are 10,000 more potent than CO2.

To construct a standard nuclear energy facility, an area of 500 to 1000 acres is required, also 1.6 million tonnes of steel and 14 million tonnes of concrete. Every tonne of Portland cement produced releases one tonne of CO2 into the atmosphere. The same applies to steel. Hundreds of trucks, consuming millions of gallons of diesel fuel, would have to deliver this material to the site. Apparently tire dust is more damaging to human health than CO2, but the latter is causing the rapid melting of the glaciers.

Once in operation, the reactor will require about 135 million litres of water daily to cool the fuel rods. Therefore, the facility has to be near a large volume of water. This past summer, because of higher global temperatures, two European and four Swedish reactors had to be shut down because the temperature of the fuel rods was becoming dangerously high.

So, now, on our planet Earth, we will have to deal with polluted water, and a dangerous mixture of chemical/radioactive waste [tailings], that no country wants to store for thousands of years, as we do not know how to store it safely for the generations of our children in the future.

Leo Kurtenbach,
Box 268, Cudworth, Sask., S0K 1B0
Phone # 256 3638